by Yiyun Li
Do I ever feel lonely? All I can say is that I’m not a keen customer for loneliness.
Once, after Lucy died, Gilbert mentioned feeling lonely “for no good reason.” What do you mean for no good reason? I asked. We lost Lucy. No, it’s not only about that, he insisted, though when I pressed he couldn’t explain. After that, for a few months, he took up drinking. His father was a drinker, though not a criminally heavy one. His mother drank, too, and she thought it was a secret. So, to see Gilbert with his drink was alarming, and I said so. There’s something in here, he thumped his chest, and I can’t get it out. Drinking won’t help you, I said. It helps a little, he said. This went on for a few weeks. Finally I put my foot down. Lucy is dead, I said. You can keep drinking to try to make yourself feel less sad, or you can put that bottle away and live with the fact that we’ll just be sad for the rest of our lives.
She broke your heart, too, didn’t she? Gilbert said.
For the first time after Lucy died my eyes felt heavy, so I said nobody’s heart really got broken except in those silly songs. Gilbert nodded and then said, Lilia, of the two of us, you’re the one who lives with pride.
I said I didn’t know what he meant. But I did.
31 DECEMBER 1947.
Stocktaking time.
Marriage: serenely happy. Throw in a parasol and a walking stick and Hetty and I could be as eternal as a couple on a china dish or a bookplate. One imagines when most couples marry they commit themselves to the long journey ahead, wishing for smooth sailing—but always there is cold rain, scorching heat, seasickness, indigestible food. Some may be shipwrecked. Some may become food for cannibals. But how many people calculate the risks before they book the trip? Not my parents. Not Hetty’s sister Susie, no less a polished product of their upbringing, who deserved every kind of happiness, yet died a year ago from cancer. One could even say Sidelle was not free from that fate. Hetty and I, on the other hand, have understood the futility of such an endeavour. No thank you, we are just fine where we are. If we want, we can take a stroll to the harbour and watch all those miniature Arks, each with a husband and a wife aboard, setting tiny sail with blind courage. So long, we wave at them. We wish you best of luck on your fatal journey.
Love: My friendship with Sidelle, as I have portrayed to Hetty, has been an ebb and a flow. If there are rules to it I do not see them clearly. Are we star-crossed lovers destined to live apart, or a pair of ageing pen pals? It doesn’t do to ask these questions, Roland—I can hear her saying that. A lot of things wouldn’t do, in Sidelle’s book. She is not Sidelle Ogden for nothing.
In between love and marriage: J. She is perhaps a little plump and vulgar for my taste, though who can say that marriage does not change one’s palate? Am I avenging Hetty or Sidelle with this pointless infidelity?
Profession: I can see I will always be an amateur in this business of book dealing. However, that shan’t cast any shadow over my interest in it. I am also an amateur in cartooning and writing propaganda and negotiating world peace. Most amateurs want to be taken seriously, and the most amateurish among them always find ways to be taken seriously. That seems the hazard the world of today and the world of tomorrow will have to face. Gone are the good old days when people had the luxury to be themselves. One does not have to deal with amateurism when being oneself. But, of course, nowadays the question is: How to be someone else convincingly?
* * *
BY GROWING OLDER BY the day and becoming stupider by the day, Roland. Isn’t that obvious?
Today they had the last memoir class. Dear me, what truths were shared, what tears were shed, what legacies were created. At lunch Nancy gave me a printed sheet. She’s insisted on bringing me the handouts. This one is especially good, she said. All the great quotes that we can use when we think about our lives. I said I couldn’t really see the words because I didn’t have my reading glasses with me. She said, You can read them later, but can I share the last line of my memoir with you? It’s inspired by one of these quotes. The teacher called my ending poignant and heartwarming and perfect.
Your teacher makes a living by lying to innocent people, I mumbled to myself.
What, Nancy said, but she’s never good at hearing what she doesn’t want to hear. This is the last line I wrote today, she said. We live to understand love, and we love to give meaning to life.
I looked at her. What’s wrong, she said. I said I was glad I ate my entrée because now, with her ending, I would have to skip the pudding. She looked horrified, but that’s her problem! She had no trouble finding someone to applaud her, but no, she wanted that person to be me.
Lilia, you know you’re not often a nice person, Nancy said.
Says who, I said.
Says everyone, she said.
Well, I agree. Has it occurred to you that I don’t want to be a nice person?
Elaine would’ve said something clever, thinking she’d hurt me, but poor Nancy could only look at me with pity in her eyes. But don’t you ever want to be a nice person? she pleaded.
Not really, I said.
What makes us think we can be someone else now that we’re all knocking on the doors of our graves? Knock knock. Who’s there. Lilia Liska from Benicia, California, that’s who I am. Always.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m also Gilbert’s wife, and his children’s mother, and his grandchildren’s grandmother. If you throw in Norman Imbody and Milt Harrison I’m more things. But do I imagine writing a memoir with an inspirational last line? No, just as I could never imagine pounding on the piano as a master pianist or painting some apples and pears and milk jars as a real artist. You don’t need to pretend to be an expert at something to be yourself. You don’t have to be an expert at anything to be yourself.
Roland, if you think about him, got one thing right. He was always himself. Always the same age. Constant. It’s a virtue, to be constant.
Katherine, all those classes you put Iola through—they may not be helping her. Not even the most skillful dancer can dance her way through life. Not even a master welder can mend a broken marriage. Not even the best computer engineer can program a perfect life.
There are a few things I can teach you. Practical things. If I had a patch of dirt I could make a garden for you. But as far as I can see, people don’t care much about gardens these days. They care about properties. Molly called yesterday and said, as though she were chitchatting, Do you know the value of the house on Roosevelt Road? I said, No, I don’t, and I don’t want to know. It’s someone else’s house now. She said, It’s going on the market. The listing price is 2.1 million. Dollars? I asked. What do you think, dimes, pennies? she said. You should’ve held on to it.
If 2.1 million dollars is the price of that house, this is not my time, I said. I’ve raised five children and a granddaughter in that house. I’ve made a garden for all of you. It’s been a good run.
Well, this may please you, but the garden is no more, Molly said. Someone built an in-law unit there. I bet they’re going to rent it out.
I thought to myself, I’m a three-time widow and I’ve lost a daughter. What’s a garden to me? So I said, What does it matter? The garden wasn’t there when we bought the house, and there’s no law saying it should always be there.
I should’ve insisted that you keep the house in the family, Molly said. None of your siblings agreed with you, I reminded her. None of them lives in the Bay Area and understands this place anymore, Molly said. How about Katherine, I said. She lives here, and she’s never said anything to disagree with me.
Have you thought that that’s exactly Katherine’s problem? She doesn’t know how to stand up for herself.
When she grew up with you, an aunt not much older but a bully all the time to her? I said. I’m not surprised.
I wasn’t the bully, Molly said. You were.
To Katherine?
<
br /> To her, to Dad, to all of us.
I said I had no idea what she was talking about. I could hear Molly take a deep breath. She has that dramatic sigh when she’s ready to say something righteous. Sorry, Mom, that’s neither here nor there. Let’s just stay with Katherine. Has it occurred to you that you may have done Katherine a disservice?
By taking her in? By raising her?
By the way you raised her, Molly said.
I raised her the way I raised all of you, I said.
But we had parents.
What’s the difference when Gilbert and I were there for her? I said.
Because you’re not her parents, and you let her know they were not there for her. It wasn’t good for a child to live with mysteries she didn’t understand.
What options did we have? I asked. To pretend we were her parents? To give her up for adoption? Besides, we never kept anything secret. We told her Lucy killed herself and Steve was gone from her life. From the very beginning we explained those things. There was no mystery.
I can’t make you see sense, Molly said.
You’re the one not seeing sense. Everything makes sense to me.
Even Lucy’s death? Molly said.
Now, that’s what I call hitting below the belt, but I didn’t say anything.
Then Molly said—I’m trying to remember everything and now I’m writing it down so I don’t forget, not that I agree with her, not that I cannot defend myself.
This is how it went:
Molly said, Mom, do you know how guilty Dad felt about Lucy’s death? It was nobody’s fault, we kept telling him, but he said if something fails in life, someone should own up to the failure. Life was harder for Lucy than for you, he said to us, because whatever was in her always ran against the world. Someone had to watch out for her, get in between her and anything that would bruise her or injure her. Your mom didn’t know that, he said. She couldn’t see it because she runs into everything all the time, too, but she doesn’t bruise easily. She can be as hard as life. Some people are born that way, and she thought Lucy should be like her. She thought everyone should be like her. But most people can get hurt. We don’t know Lucy’s father. Maybe he gets hurt easily, too.
I felt my blood turn cold then. Lucy’s father, I said. What did he say about Lucy’s father?
Not much, Molly said. Only that he was a man you met before you married Dad.
Did he tell Lucy, too?
I don’t know, Mom. When he told us, we were all grown-ups.
Your father had the most honorable soul, I said. I don’t think he’d ever have told Lucy.
Then he probably didn’t, Molly said.
And thank you for enlightening me about a part of my marriage kept unknown to me, I said.
Mom, we all love you, and we all know how much you’ve done for us, Molly said.
The worst kind of sweet talk, I thought. People often say to their lovers before breaking up: I hope you know how much you’ve meant to me. A murderer might even say that before he carries out his murdering.
I’ve been thinking about Gilbert and Lucy since Molly’s call. Did Lucy inherit something from Roland that we didn’t understand? Did Gilbert and I miss something? But any question you ask is like a white flag you wave on a battleground. No white flag can save us, however big it is and however long we wave it.
Late in Gilbert’s life, when his cancer returned, he couldn’t fall asleep one night so I sat up with him. I knew he wanted to talk. There were moments in our marriage when he wanted to do that, remember the past together, but I was always able to cut him off with a funny comment. What’s the use of talking about the past? I wanted my mind to be sharp, and the past hammered and blunted it. I preferred to think about the weather and the trees and the flowers and what dinner I was planning to cook for the family.
But when Gilbert was so frail and we knew he was going to die, I thought to myself, from now on I will let him use his time in whatever way he wants. He asked me, Do you think we didn’t love Lucy enough? I said, We’ve raised five other children. Let’s talk about them first. He said, But we don’t have to. We can see how they’ve turned out. I said, Then let’s be happy for them. And Gilbert said, Do you think we failed to give Lucy the love she needed?
Nonsense, I said. That girl got more love from you and from me than anyone we know. He then said, We didn’t give her a happy life, did we? I said, Happiness, parents can’t give that. We only give children lives. And before he said any more I told him to stop. When you miss Lucy, I said, just look at Katherine.
Sometimes I see Steve in Katherine, too, he said.
No you don’t, I said.
All children have genes from both parents, he said. Sometimes I think about our children and I can tell what they got from you and what they got from me. All except Lucy.
She took after me, I said.
That’s what we decided to tell ourselves. You said it to make me feel better. I said it because I didn’t know Lucy’s father.
Of course you do, I said. You’re her father.
Yes, I think I am, he said. Then he started to wipe away his tears. You and Lucy made me a good man, he said. Remember those hopes we had when we were young, the peace conference, the golden dawn for all the generations to come? When I saw you near the opera house for the first time, I thought how wonderful it would be to share the world with that beautiful girl.
Come on, I said, you sound like a mushy actor. He laughed. Lilia, thank you for putting up with me, he said. What do you mean? I said. You don’t believe in those good things I believe in, he said. You old fool, I said. If I didn’t believe in them I wouldn’t be your wife. Don’t you know me? Nobody can make me do anything.
I didn’t ask Gilbert about the good things he thought I didn’t believe in. Maybe I should have, and then he would’ve known he was wrong. They say when people are closer to death they want closure. But I’m not a sentimental person. I don’t believe in closure. If you want to see some closure you can flip to the end of this book. Plenty of closure. You can skip the parts between this page and page 650, or you can read them. It wouldn’t make a huge difference to Roland or to me.
Closure. I wonder if my great-grandmother Lucille ever thought about that. What’s the point of closure when at any moment you could tumble off your mule into the valley and never see another day again? Or your best pal could hack you to death at night so he could run away with your two hundred dollars’ worth of gold? Rattlesnakes and grizzly bears and floods and snowstorms—would they be so kind to wait until you find closure? And the man whom Great-grandmother Lucille took care of, both of his legs amputated, just lying there waiting for death, what use would he have had for that comforting word? There was this young Miwok mother, fourteen, really still a girl, when her white husband was crushed by a fallen tree and her tribe refused to take her and her baby back. Great-grandmother Lucille made a place for them in her household. When the baby died, the young mother returned to her tribe. Did she think about closure then? Did Great-grandmother Lucille, who was said to have treated the girl as her own daughter, the baby her grandchild?
Gilbert was right. I’m as hard as the hardest life. My love is as hard as I am. I came from a settler family. Like a settler I’ve lived through the bumps and wounds and amputations and deaths. I don’t mope. Give me an ax and a hoe and I’ll start a garden. Give me a good man and I’ll build a family with him. Anything I can do, I do it with all my might, but I don’t fight storms and floods and earthquakes. I don’t deceive myself into thinking I can be who I am not.
But I was born a hundred years too late. We were settled people when I was born, everyone is settled now, and will be settled forever. Look at Molly, using those grand words like “communities” and “platforms” and “missions” and “progress” the way Gilbert talked about peace a
nd eighty percent of the world’s population loving one another, as though those pretty words were passwords to heaven. Look at Iola, with all those enrichment classes teaching her to skate like a bumbling swan, to play the violin like a carpenter with a bad saw, and to paint like paints don’t cost a penny.
Sorry, Katherine. I’m not criticizing you or Molly or anyone. I just feel bad for you all. How quickly settled people forget how to live in the unsettled world! Life doesn’t soften itself for anyone, but how we soften and pamper ourselves.
Roland and Hetty also came from settler families. I don’t know their particular stories, but I once asked Mrs. Anderson, the librarian, for a book about the history of Nova Scotia. She wrote to a friend of hers in Vermont, who she said was a painter with a little place in Cape Breton. Mrs. Anderson’s friend eventually sent a few books that she found in a local rummage sale.
In any case, the settlers in that part of the world didn’t have any better a time of it than my folks. Maybe worse, with all those snowstorms and shipwrecks. Without the gold. I remember the story of a whole boat of people drowned in the middle of the night. They only had their pajamas on, and the town had to collect a huge amount of money to buy each body a new suit to be buried in. Decent people, were they not? But none of them, the living or the dead, would’ve been thinking about that word, closure.
31 DECEMBER 1956.
Stocktaking time. Another year.
Marriage: heavenly. Mood: serene. Professional prospect: none whatsoever, though Hetty is a great manager of the household, and I can playact my book dealer’s role like the best of amateur performers. What else do we need to keep this life going?
Sidelle: sixty-five letters from her in the last year; sixty-seven from me to her, which, as I’ve asked, were sent to the shop address. Soon I shall look into purchasing a second safe.